


Finding Truth

by semaphoredrivethru



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Bondage, F/M, Romance, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-04-16
Updated: 2005-04-16
Packaged: 2017-11-03 18:33:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/384533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semaphoredrivethru/pseuds/semaphoredrivethru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A birthday giftfic. The birthday girl asked for Snape/Hermione, romance, bondage, and a tattoo. <i>et voila!</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Truth

When he kisses her, it doesn’t matter that he’s more than twenty years older than her. It doesn’t matter that he was her professor for seven years, or that they made each other’s lives miserable in their own ways during that time of her schooling. He sometimes even forgets that she’s ever been anyone else but his lover, until his lips slide along the soft skin of her abdomen and over the small, triangular tattoo in elvish that’s directly over her second charka; a permanent reminder of the rock-solid bond she shares with her two closest friends.

But it’s a testament to how much he has changed since the end of the war that he doesn’t begrudge her that friendship all that much. While he’d be perfectly happy to be the centre of her universe in all ways, when she gasps and moans in a way that he knows only he has ever heard from her, he knows that he’s her True North as no one else could ever be, and that’s more than enough, even for his grasping and needy heart.

Her hair is still thick and frizzy, but it forms a perfect halo when she’s lying back in bed, and he spends a few moments nearly every morning they’re together with his large – regal, she calls it – nose buried in the soft strands, cataloguing the different ingredients in the shampoo that she mixes herself. If he were any other man, he might even play with her hair, but instead he contents himself with these few moments that she lets him pretend are stolen.

And his hair is still slick from oil; a genetic curse that he hasn’t had the urge to hide since his blessedly long-ago teenage years. But she doesn’t mind so much, and she points out now and then that she’s that last one to cast stones about unfortunate hair. He’s still frighteningly thin despite the nearly full stone of weight he’s put on since she’s been around to make sure he eats more than once a day (or so), and his elbows poke her when she tries to crawl back into bed after a midnight trip to the bathroom. 

But they’re not together because they find the other beautiful in a physical sense. There are times that they don’t even find a need for words or sensuality, content to just be with one another, calmly entwined on the worn sofa in his sitting room as he reads books on potions theory and she studies earnestly in her insatiable quest for more knowledge. Other times they talk about politics and world events, both in the wizarding world and in the muggle world, since they both agree that the two worlds are inextricably entangled.

She still keeps a flat of her own, though she’s rarely there these days. He’s thought about asking her to move in with him, but there are still a few of the old walls left, and he needs to keep up the lie that he doesn’t need anyone the way they need each other. It’s a slow and difficult series of changes that they’ve both made in order to be at this point, after all.

For years, the only impressions that he had of her were certainly not what even a generous soul could call favourable. He saw her as an irritating know-it-all who just _had_ to be the one to give all the correct answers in class, no matter that her peers would never learn anything if she continually supplied them with all the answers and notes they could need. He saw her as one of Potter’s incurable co-conspirators, the brains behind countless hair-brained schemes that in all rights should have seen the three of them dead long before they could finish puberty. And he saw her as a bushy-haired, stuffy and at times unbearably shrill young woman that needed a proper shag in the worst sort of way.

But as the war progressed, and as they both grew and changed, he began to see past those biased views. He saw that her insatiable thirst for knowledge was just her way of coping with impossible circumstances; if she knew everything, then nothing bad could possibly take her by surprise, after all. He saw that she often acted as a voice of reason to her two best friends, holding them back so they didn’t run off half-cocked into certain death. And he saw that even if she didn’t seem to be comfortable in her own skin, that there were fascinating depths to her that her severely buttoned exterior didn’t betray.

And the irony of _that_ particular observation was not lost on him, which was the biggest step to that date.

Even beyond those epiphanies, it was a small eternity until they found their way into willing arms and eager hands and the completion they hadn’t known could be found.

There are nights when tender love making isn’t on the agenda, but rather the need is so strong and rough that she begs him to bruise her and thanks him when he leaves livid marks on her creamy skin. On those nights, she sobs in gratitude when he restrains her so firmly she can barely move a finger. He blindfolds her, bends her over, and pushes and pushes as much as her trust lets him go, and each time he goes further and further.

After a night just like that, as he carefully released her from her willing bonds, pressing soft kisses to the red marks on her wrists, she had an epiphany of her own. It was sudden and strong and more than she’d ever thought she’d ever realise, and she found herself crying softly from the absolute beauty of it.

He’d worried that maybe he’d gone too far, hurt her too much, but she finally convinced him that these were a good sort of tears, though she didn’t tell him what caused them.

Because she knows him like no one else could. She knows his quirks and barriers and fears, and knows he’s not ready to be faced with this truth that he has to find on his own, if ever. So she gives him the time and the illusion of space that she knows he needs. She waits, as patiently as she can, for once not pushing the answer in his face.


End file.
